The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a resource-rich country, yet very poor, had been bleeding, literally, for quite some time with no prospects for peace on the horizon.
Apart from a never-ending war between the government troops and drug-crazed rebels, the country also plunged into a political turmoil as President Joseph Kabila refused to vacate office when his term came to an end last December.
His refusal to step down and call for elections had fueled rising militia violence and insecurity in the country.
Congo's electoral commission said earlier last month that a vote to replace Kabila would probably not be possible this year.
Reuters reports that a series of marches across the country called by pro-democracy group Lucha and backed by several leading opposition politicians were mostly put out by heavy police deployments.
Human Rights Watch said that police in the DRC arrested at least 128 people on 1 August as they dispersed protests demanding Kabila leave power by the end of the year.
The news agency also claimed that DRC security forces killed dozens of anti-Kabila protesters last year and recent bouts of unrest had raised fears of a resurgence of the civil wars that led to the deaths of millions in Congo between 1996 and 2003.
Apart from the instability, which dominates news headlines on a daily basis, the country registered a huge leap in diamond production last year.
This didn’t attract any attention from the media.
Data released by the Kimberley Process showed that DRC produced 23,2 million carats last year, making it the second largest diamond producer in the world after Russia, which produced 40.3 million carats during the same period.
DRC overtook Botswana, which produced 20,5 million carats.
Botswana was the second largest diamond producer in terms of volume last year as it produced 20,7 million carats, while DRC was third as it produced 16 million carats.
It was followed by Botswana, which also registered a drop in production by 4.7 percent in terms of value to $2.85 billion.
Canada, which also recorded a drop in output by 17 percent to $1.4 billion, was third followed by South Africa, which registered a 10 percent drop to $1.25 billion. Angola was in the fifth position having produced diamonds worth just over $1 billion.
Congo’s diamonds are of very poor quality and output was dominated by small scale miners.
Global Witness said the DRC’s industrial mining sector was weak and cannot be in a position to produce such millions of carats every year without the help of small scale miners.
It was also believed that more than 700,000 artisanal miners operate in the DRC.
The country passed a law in 1981 that forced Miniere de Bakwange (MIBA), a state-owned diamond mining company, to open up the majority of its fields to artisanal diggers.
This was said to have paved the way for artisinal mining of placer diamond deposits along the Bushimaïe and Lubilash tributaries to the Sankuru River (Bakwanga Mine) near the town of Mbuji-Maye (formerly Bakwanga) in the Kasaï-Oriental province and along the Tshikapa River (Forminière Diamond Mine) in the Kasaï-Occidental province.
Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished
